Waccamaw

The Waccamaw were a Siouan people of the Carolina coast, whose villages lined the Waccamaw and Pee Dee rivers. Their name, recorded as Guacaya by the kidnapped interpreter Francisco de Chicora in the 1520s, is of unknown meaning. Their language went unrecorded, though it is thought to have belonged to the Catawban family.

Farming towns had stood in their country since the Mississippian period. Disease and settlement cut their numbers sharply: the Carolina census of 1715 counted only 610 Waccamaw.

They joined the Yamasee War of 1715 against the colonists, and a conflict in 1720 left sixty more dead or captured. In 1755, pressed by Cherokee and Natchez raids, the survivors joined the Cheraw and Pedee in being adopted into King Hagler's Catawba nation.